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Bowe Bergdahl furor adds to Dem angst about Barack Obama |
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On Monday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was cheering the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. “I am looking forward to him being reunited with his family soon and am thankful for his service, his sacrifice, and his courage,” the New Hampshire Democrat said in a statement. By Wednesday, she wasn’t cheering anymore. “I continue to have concerns about the Administration’s failure to consult Congress,” she said in a second statement after the Obama administration briefed senators about the exchange for five Taliban prisoners. And of the allegations that Bergdahl deserted his unit, Shaheen said, “I fully expect … that there will be a full investigation into Bergdahl’s separation from his unit, and that appropriate actions will be taken.” (Also on POLITICO: 7 times Obama dissed his critics) For Democratic candidates in the most competitive races, the Bergdahl case has been yet another reason to put a healthy distance between themselves and President Barack Obama. They’ve been doing it on Obamacare for months, but they’re not exactly rushing to his defense on the economy, the Keystone pipeline or his response to the Veterans Affairs scandal, either. If this were a sales contest, they would have been fired by now. The political reality, of course, is that it’s not a sales contest. It’s a midterm election, and specifically, a midterm in the second term of a presidency, where it’s not that unusual for candidates to put a bit of distance between themselves and the White House. And a lot of the most competitive races are in red states where Obama’s not exactly Mr. Coattails. Even by those standards, though, Democrats are staying far away from Obama this year. At best, they’re quietly following in his footsteps and not admitting it. At worst, they’re leaving skid marks. You almost need a detective to find Democrats using the words “President Obama” on the stump these days — at least in a positive way. (Also on POLITICO: DOD: Bergdahl's condition improving) Take the VA scandal. Democratic candidates piled on Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki so mercilessly, one after another, over the increasingly grim stories of delayed medical care and cooked books that Obama was basically forced to cut him loose. But there are other flash points for red-state Democrats. After the administration put out its new climate rule, which calls for a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state who’s running to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, blasted Obama with a radio ad accusing him of “targeting Kentucky coal.” Embattled West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall said he’d introduce a bill to block it. And then there’s Keystone. Both Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas are making a point of opposing Obama by calling for its construction. Landrieu built an ad around her fights with the administration on oil and gas production, and Pryor noted in Little Rock that “from the very beginning I’ve been in a different place than where the president is on this.” Obama is doing marginally better on his economic agenda. It’s not so much that Democratic candidates are running on it — they’re just not actively running away from it. Some are quietly picking up his themes, like pay equity and an increase in the minimum wage, without mentioning his name. Most of the time, though, they’re localizing their own economic plans. (Also on POLITICO: Chambliss: Would have raised 'Holy Hell' on Bergdahl) Even then, sometimes they’ll give Obama just a little punch when it helps them. On Grimes’ website, for example, she lists lots of economic issues that could fit with Obama’s agenda easily — like the minimum wage, pay equity and affordable child care. The only time she mentions Obama, though, is to take one more whack at Obama’s “attack on Kentucky’s energy industry.” Democratic operatives say the pattern is largely being driven by where the competitive races are and who the audiences are — an unusual mix of deep-red states and the older, more conservative midterm voter demographics that are more typical for midterm elections. In that environment, they say, it’s not surprising that Democratic candidates are looking for easy ways to distance themselves from Obama. “Because of the vagaries of this Senate cycle, there are a disproportionate number of red states in play,” said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane — especially states like North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alaska, where Obama didn’t even mount a serious campaign in 2012. As one consultant who’s involved in some of the most competitive races put it: “It’s just a bad draw.” Nothing captures the pattern better than the way several Democratic candidates are talking about Obamacare — after Obama said Democrats should “forcefully defend and be proud” of their health care law. Both Michelle Nunn, the Democratic Senate candidate from Georgia, and Grimes have danced around questions about whether they would have voted for it if they’d been in the Senate. And they’re hardly the only examples of Democratic squishiness. A few of the others that have been stacking up during this election cycle:
With quotes like those, Republican operatives don’t have to work to put Democrats on the defensive on Obamacare. And GOP candidates don’t feel as much pressure to do what Democrats would like them to do: spell out what their alternative to the health care law would be. As one GOP ad maker put it, Democrats aren’t forcing Republicans to lay out any specifics because they’re too busy “running away from health care.” It may look bad on the surface, but Democrats don’t always go into a defensive crouch when they talk about Obamacare. Sometimes they just have to be pinned down about what their real bottom line is about the law. The question, though, is which will dominate the elections — the longer interviews or the quick, defensive quotes. Begich, for example, told POLITICO he still believes the law is “not perfect” and talked up the proposals he and other Democratic senators have proposed to improve it, like adding a “copper plan” as another low-cost option. But he said the law was still a worthwhile accomplishment, because it has helped the 34 percent of Alaskans who used to be denied individual health coverage because of health problems. “For Alaska, 34 percent of the people are not getting denied health care. It’s a good thing,” Begich said. And with Shaheen, the non-answer may have just been one bad radio interview. She has since been more positive about the law, telling POLITICO in a recent interview that she was proud of her vote. “I do think we’re hearing some successes from the heath care law that are very important to making sure that people in New Hampshire are getting the care they need,” she said. But others are sticking with their non-answers. A Grimes aide defended her quote this way: “Our position hasn’t changed. Alison has been very clear about the type of health reform she would have liked to see passed and the type of changes to the current health law she will support in the U.S. Senate.” Some Democratic strategists say it’s fair for Democrats to avoid what they consider “gotcha” questions about how they would have voted, knowing how Republicans will use any answer they give. And Walsh’s aides say he’s justified in keeping his distance because his Republican opponent, Steve Daines, has built most of his strategy around tying Walsh to Obamacare even though Walsh had nothing to do with it. (Nunn’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.) That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re opposed to the law, though. In fact, most of these candidates talk more passionately about why the law shouldn’t be repealed, rather than how they would have voted or did vote. North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, for example, has been accusing her Republican opponent, Thom Tillis, of hiding the consequences of his calls to repeal the law. And in Florida, Charlie Crist has been a vocal advocate of the whole law, telling one audience that Obamacare is “great” and that “I think it’s incredibly important and I don’t back away from it.” They’re hoping that’s a good way to put Republicans on the defensive, since some are showing signs that they haven’t really grappled with the consequences of repealing the law — like when McConnell said the fate of the state’s health insurance exchange is unconnected to the fate of Obamacare, even though it only exists because of Obamacare. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who advises Senate candidates, says their focus on opposing repeal is the right bottom line, since most polls show that only a minority of Americans want the law repealed — though a POLITICO poll found that it’s a closer call in the states and districts with competitive races this year. “The vast majority want to improve it, and that’s where the Democrats who voted for it are and ought to be,” said Mellman. “The ones who weren’t in the Senate are rightly saying they would have voted for a different bill. Because they weren’t there.” A lot of Democrats have also been much more aggressive in pushing for Medicaid expansion in their states — a key provision of Obamacare — and blasting Republicans for opposing it. Landrieu, for example, has hit Gov. Bobby Jindal for refusing to broaden his state’s Medicaid coverage, saying thousands of low-income residents without insurance are falling into the “Jindal gap.” Even some Democrats who seem unenthusiastic about the law open up a bit when they talk about their own health care stories. And one of the most emotional ones comes from Natalie Tennant, the West Virginia secretary of state who’s running for the open seat being vacated by Jay Rockefeller. Tennant is another one of the Democratic candidates who have dodged the question of whether they would have voted for the Affordable Care Act. And she has plenty of criticisms of the law. She says it needs to provide more competition among insurers in West Virginia, and she has even suggested that the employer mandate should be eliminated, since an Urban Institute study concluded it wouldn’t make much difference on how many people are covered. But in an interview with POLITICO, Tennant says her criticisms of the law don’t undermine her support for it. That’s because it ends the practice of rejecting coverage for pre-existing conditions, a practice she and her family experienced in an all too personal way. Tennant’s daughter, Delaney, had to have open-heart surgery when she was a week old to correct a heart defect called transposition of the great vessels, in which the aorta and the pulmonary artery are switched. “The doctors said, ‘she’s just not as pink as we’d like her to be,’” Tennant recalls. “When they took her back to the nursery, her lips were turning blue.” The surgery worked, and Delaney, now 12, is healthy. But that also meant that Delaney had a pre-existing condition — so later, when Tennant and her husband tried to get health insurance for their small business, the insurer refused to cover Delaney. “I just remember saying, ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do?’ What parent takes something their child can’t have?” she recalls. Tennant says that experience gives her all the motivation she needs to fight for the law’s survival. It does need work, she says, especially in bringing more insurance competition to West Virginia so its residents can get lower rates. But she also says she doesn’t want Delaney to face any more rejections from insurers because of the heart surgery that saved her life. “I want her to be able to follow her creativity and life path, and not be stopped from doing that because she doesn’t have insurance,” Tennant said. Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.
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